01 October 2011 11:53 PM

Here we go, full speed ahead into the Third World. In the poor countries of Africa and Asia, people move into the bare, harsh hospitals where their sick relatives are being treated, bringing food and clean sheets and taking on much of their care. If they don’t, those relatives will die of neglect.

Now Dr Peter Carter, the General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, wants us to start down the same path.

He thinks we have somehow ‘sleepwalked’ into thinking that taking an elderly relative to the lavatory, while he or she is in hospital, is ‘someone else’s responsibility’.

From now on, it’s going to be up to us. ‘The services need to gear themselves up to make people aware, “You are very welcome to come in and look after mum, dad, husband, wife, etc.” ’

I like that ‘very welcome’. What if we don’t welcome this arrangement ourselves? Will we then find ‘mum, dad, husband, wife, etc’ lying moaning in a pool of urine, afflicted with bedsores and unfed when we finally get away from work and struggle our way to the hos¬pital through the jammed streets and the predatory, expensive car park? I suspect so.

Sleepwalked? Someone else’s responsibility? The gulf between this character and the rest of us is too wide to bridge. Hospitals in civilised countries exist precisely because the care of the sick is a specialised activity.

People go to hospitals because they are too ill to look after themselves, and because their own close families lack the skills to do the job.Gigantic sums of money are spent on building, staffing and equipping these places. Yet they cannot do the most basic tasks any more.

It is not because of lack of money. All these billions cannot replace the conscientious Christian spirit of selfless service that once motivated the nursing profession, and which has now been replaced by smarmy platitudes and meaningless degrees.

In the hospitals of our liberated, non-judgmental, equality-and-diversity Brave New World, the most basic tasks are not done, or are done badly. People are beginning to dread going to them.

This is where we are, and where we are going. No wonder that the ‘right’ to be put down like a sick pet is becoming a popular cause. If the country plans to commit deliberate suicide, then it’s not surprising if many of its inhabitants feel they might as well join in.

You should have thrown cabbages, Ed, not shaken his hand

I've never understood why we should be keen on young people getting involved in politics, itself a form of mental illness.Since they’ve never earned a living, paid tax or been parents, they are generally insufferable self-righteous ‘idealists’, full of fancies about how to spend other people’s money.

They should be booed off the stage with old cabbages and howls of ‘Why aren’t you at school?’, not indulged and fawned over by party leaders.

It’s for their own good. After all, look what happened to William Hague.

In any case, what was so great about Labour’s new child star, Rory Weal? His whingeing delivery and urgent finger-jabbing looked and sounded as if he had attended the Ken Livingstone School of Speech and Drama.

And what drama it was. The poor mite, formerly dwelling in opulent luxury, has been forced to live in a four-bedroom semi and attend a grammar school. He disapproves of them, of course, but not enough to commute to one of his beloved comprehensives. Truly, it would take Charles Dickens to do full justice to this tragedy of our times.

I am not sure quite how he owes his salvation from poverty to the Welfare State, but even if he does, that Welfare State has been lavishly supported by all major parties since the Thirties, and has never been the sole property of Labour.

He doesn’t know what he is talking about, and he proclaims it like a trainee commissar. Come back in

40 years, Rory. Then you might have something interesting to say.

Squalid Britain, seen from a corner shop

Anyone fooled by the brief flurry of ‘toughness’ after the so-called riots should study the following case, which could be anywhere in Britain. I won’t say precisely where, as it might make things even worse for the victim.

The owner of a small corner off-licence (let us call him Frank) is 60. He works 15 hours a day, every day. He had a major heart attack two years ago and is waiting for knee replacements. The shop is also his home.When he opened it 23 years ago, the neighbourhood was res¬pectable. Now it has fallen under the shadow of our moral decline (the one I am always told I am panicking about). Bit by bit, the consequences of our mad school and social policies, and our unhinged subsidies for fatherless households, have borne their grim fruit.

Frank says: ‘One house, near my home, has 11 feral children, nearly all from different fathers. Most are barred from school and they run riot by day and by night. I have had to ban them from my shop because of the thieving and abuse.

‘My shop windows have been broken three times. My van – vital to my business – has also been attacked. Its wing mirrors have been torn off twice, it has been scratched deliberately50 times and has bodywork dents from kicks and punches. The cost of fixing this damage – the van is leased – will bankrupt me.’

So Frank called the police. You would, wouldn’t you? They have proved most reluctant to act, fobbing him off with the ‘What do you expect us to do?’ attitude that has become infuriatingly familiar to so many ¬victims of this cruel anarchy.

One defeatist officer has actually told Frank that he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t pack up and move. His persecutors know this and have said to him: ‘We can do anything we like and you can’t do anything about it.’

As I read Frank’s graphic, terse letter, I suddenly noticed these words: ‘Such has been my despair, I sank to the level of trying to end it all last week – but I failed.’

Since then the police have finally acted for justice, order and the rights of the free British subject to live unmolested in his home.

They have threatened Frank with prosecution. Why? Because when one of his tormentors called him a ‘fat faggot’, he put his arm across the teenage monster’s chest. That’s all. I feel a moral panic coming on.

*************What would you call a society that made adoption incredibly hard and abortion incredibly easy? I’d call it sick at heart.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

"‘Natural’ contraception is ‘sensible’, but ‘artificial’ contraception is even more ‘sensible’, and surely celibacy, except when intending to have children, is the most ‘sensible’ of all. "

We plainly mean different things by some words, sir.
There is no such ting as "natural" contraception because contraception is by definition unnatural. Abstinence means keeping yourself from doing something, whereas contraception is taking a deliberate action to frustrate and stultify what is being done. In this respect contraception is to sex what bulimia is to a healthy appetite. Natural birth control by abstinence is like observing a diet.
You seem to make no distinction, sir, between natural birth control and unnatural birth prevention.
If so, there is little point in continuing the discussion.
Thank you for your suggestions about finding the ancient texts.

Peter Preston, I’ve yet to find an English translation of ‘Sedes Apostolicae’. If you Google “documenta catholica omnia ss gregorius xiv bulla sedes apostolica” (including pages from outside the United Kingdom in your search), the original Latin is the first result. This encyclical was in force from 1591 to 1869. I cannot find the text online for St Jerome’s epistle 121, but the quotation is undisputed.

I agree that the current teaching of the Catholic Church forbids abortion, and I condemn abortion, as do many other vocal critics of the Church. Search “christopher hitchens abortion” on Youtube, for some excellent videos, in particular ‘Hitchens: Humanism and abortion’ by Melvin6566842. If you’re wondering why the Church has received more criticism than our government (and I dispute this), then the answer is surely this: the Church is a moral leader (as well as a state), and a high level of morality is expected; the child-abuse scandal wasn’t a failure to act, but an active cover-up; the victims were born humans and legal persons; the Church’s actions were legal crimes as well as moral crimes.

‘Humanae Vitae’ itself permits sex only if it’s potentially procreative. But, even if permitting calendar-based contraception doesn’t contradict this (there’s always the possibility of failure), surely permitting intercourse beyond menopause does. Pius XI’s ‘Casti Connubii’ justifies this by saying that God created infertility. Surely then, God created other ‘imperfections’, like homosexuality and premature ejaculation. To say that there’s some moral difference between ‘natural’ birth-control and ‘artificial’ birth-control is spurious: sperm is intentionally ‘wasted’ either way. Even with conception, sperm is ‘wasted’, because only a few at most get to fertilize. ‘Natural’ contraception is ‘sensible’, but ‘artificial’ contraception is even more ‘sensible’, and surely celibacy, except when intending to have children, is the most ‘sensible’ of all. Ultimately, it would be sensible to abandon this silly policy. This is another example of the institutionalized dislike and fear of sex.

Ahhh yes... so religion can be singled out for all kinds of atrocities. Conveniently forgetting what pre-colonial societies in the Americas engaged in. Or the fact that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot committed wholesale industrial mass slaughter through ideologies not rooted in religion but rather in the worst kinds of Social Darwinism.

Our modern liberal society is a massive failure precisely because it is a social engineering experiment. Communism, Nazism and Apartheid were all social engineering experiments with catastrophic consequences for humanity, Apartheid being unique for the fact that its progenitors even attempted to have both scientific and (Calvinist) religious justifications for it. At least the Catholic and Anglican churches took a strong stand against it.

Contributor D Potter, whom I thank for his kind reply, ranges over so many topics that any adequate response must inevitably exceed the word limit. I hope he will excuse me therefore, if I reply in two stages.
In response to my request for textual details of utterances which he ascribes to St Paul, he refers me instead to “Sedes Apostolicae” of Pope Gregory XIV and to a letter which he ascribes to St Jerome. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to find the original texts of either document. I always find it safer and less exposed to unwarranted interpolations to read the original texts, whenever I can, if these are available, rather than the translations of other, perhaps interested, parties. Perhaps you can refer me to some website where I may read the actual words of those gentlemen.
However, it cannot, I think, be denied that the teaching of that Church forbids the ante-natal extermination of infants.

““I find it rather sad” you write “that many people apply gentler moral standards to religious organizations than to non-religious organizations.”

My own experience is the opposite of yours, sir. The Catholic authorities have been accused - not infrequently with some ardour and even zest - of failing to protect some children from abuse by some of their representatives. Our own British authorities are clearly failing to protect ante-natal infants from extermination – according to published figures to the tune of over 189,000 in 2010 for England and Wales alone.
I wonder whether any of those who so loudly condemn the faults of the Catholic Church, have actually even written to their parliamentary representatives similarly condemning the failure of parliament to protect the nation’s most helpless young.
“Pope Paul VI’s ‘Humanae Vitae’”, you write “states, “The Church,[…] in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law,[…] teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life”.”
Then you offer your own inaccurate interpretation of it as “So, yes, only sexual intercourse that is within marriage and that is intended to be procreative is allowed.”
Not so. The Pontiff concerned makes no reference to intention at all. There is a world of difference between birth control by abstaining from behaviour likely to produce births and birth prevention by actively frustrating and stultifying the act itself, while engaged in it.
I am no theologian but it hardly takes a Sherlock Holmes to see that the natural birth control is not only sensible but may actually also lead to enhanced virtue in the individual, whereas the prevention of birth is a crass insult to sex itself.

Peter Preston, as I understand it, Newtonian physics are still valid above the level of particles. Religious believers can hardly be described as ‘ambitious’, when they blindly accept received wisdom as immutable truth. My vituperation of the Catholic Church is predictable, but I find it rather sad that many people apply gentler moral standards to religious organizations than to non-religious organizations.

I am currently trawling through my voluminous notes on theological issues, and I shall cite the passage of which I am thinking when I find it. In the mean time, I shall refer you to Pope Gregory XIV’s ‘Sedes Apostolicae’, in which he states that abortion is not murder unless the fetus is animated. Also, St Jerome’s epistle to Aglasia states, “The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs”.

Well, the Catholic Church is the world’s largest Christian church. It has committed crimes probably unsurpassed in magnitude by the crimes of any other church. Might that not be the reason for all this vituperation? Further, Catholics are even more liable to hypocrisy because of their strict sexual ethics. Poll after poll shows most Catholics breach the anti-contraception doctrine, while many of those hypocrites criticize homosexuals for instance.

Pope Paul VI’s ‘Humanae Vitae’ states, “The Church,[…] in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law,[…] teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life”. So, yes, only sexual intercourse that is within marriage and that is intended to be procreative is allowed. Indeed, until this encyclical was published in 1968, the Vatican would not even recognize the ‘unitive’ or emotional importance of sex. And, as St Paul wrote in 1 ‘Corinthians’, “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn”. That is to say, it is better to be celibate, even if one is not a priest or nun, and that doesn’t sound like a dislike of sex?

So, you think that for the Church to ban abortion is more practicable than for the Church to ban war? I would dispute that, if only because war happens in public, while abortion happens in private, and because war requires the co-opting of very many people, while abortion requires the co-operation of only the mother and the doctor.

Even euthanasia arguably has its exceptions. As I understand it, the Catholic Church permits palliative treatments on terminally ill patients that are known to hasten death: the principle of double effect.

“As far as I know, scientists are moving away from the notion of 'laws' of physics”

But have they – as far as you know – actually abandoned those ‘laws’, sir? Plainly such ‘laws’ – like any other laws – can be rescinded or adapted by the lawmakers themselves but that is not what I asked. Can they be broken? After all, if all the scientific theorists are asserting is that “proposition x is universally true - er, until we think of something better”, then plainly its “truth” is at best only temporary and must always be controvertible and can plainly inspire anything approaching belief only in those who conceive truth itself as depending on their own perception of it.
Religious belief on the other hand is of a different kind and its adherents are, it seems to me, more ambitious, for they seek not temporary and local stop-gap ‘truths’ but Truth itself, independent of whether human beings can perceive it or not. You may conclude, sir, that such people are foolishly pursuing something which do not exist but nothing you have offered so far - other than your nowadays rather predictable anti-Catholic vituperation - lends the slightest support to such a conclusion.

You assert further that “..early Christians, like St Paul, believed that abortion, and even assault causing miscarriage, were morally acceptable until the point of ensoulment.”

I don’t suppose you would care to direct me to any of that saint’s recorded utterances which might support that assertion, would you, sir?

Why is it, I wonder, that when people attack the beliefs of Christians, it is almost always the poor Catholics who come in for the most ferocious denigration and mockery? If I were a Catholic, I think I might even run the risk of feeling a kind of secular pride at belonging to a community of believers so consistently considered “worthy of the foeman’s steel”. Certainly D Potter is seriously misinformed, if he thinks that “only sex that is intended to be procreative has been permitted” by that Church’s teaching or that that same institution suffers from “is a dislike of sex.”

“I am not convinced” you say, sir “ that the Catholic Church's stance on abortion derives from a desire to preserve life.”

But people are not always in a position, however they may desire it, to preserve life but what if that Church’s prohibition of that outrage ‘derives’ instead from a different and more urgent desire – over which people certainly do have control - to keep people from committing atrocities?
A doctor may not be able to save a sick man’s life but, if he were deliberately to end the life which he couldn’t save, he would no longer be merely un unsuccessful doctor but would have become a murderer. I think you’ll find that the same Church will also, and for the same reason, forbid euthanasia – and its modern precursor “assisted suicide”.

Peter Preston, I think 'reason' can be an ambiguous term. Logic is by definition reasonable. 2 + 2 = 4: that is by definition true. It could be untrue, only if we were to assign a different meaning to at least one of '2', '+', '=' and '4'. Alternatively, if, by 'reason', you mean inferring evidence from experience, then again I agree that to some extent trust/faith is necessary, though it is reasonable to assign different credibility values to different assertions. I do not unconditionally trust my senses: that I am using a computer right now can never be true in the sense that '2 + 2 = 4' is true. Acknowledging this, I can still say that I am sane, sanity being a value-judgement any way. If you have not done so, I recommend watching 'The Matrix' and reading Plato's allegory of the cave and Bostrom's simulation hypothesis.

Despite Plato's allegory (you sound as if you may have read it), comparing the Sun and reason is specious. We do not know with certainty that the Sun exists, if only because one can never be sure whether one is living a dream or not. As already implied, therefore, reason, in the sense of inference, requires differing amounts of faith, but ultimately always some faith. Reason, in the sense of logic, however, is by definition true, as already demonstrated: how our minds work (the other meaning that you have assigned to the word 'reason') does not impinge on the validity of logic.

There are many criteria for assessing how much faith should be put in assertions. As I have said, logical propositions require no faith, as they are by definition true. The credibility of empirical observations ultimately depends on the credibility of the (alleged) witnesses, which is determined by the number of witnesses, whether they have any vested interests, whether they are prone to lying, etc.

As far as I know, scientists are moving away from the notion of 'laws' of physics, but unfortunately I do not know enough quantum physics. In any case, though, science does not bribe and threaten people to live in a particular way. Therefore, whether certain scientific assertions are falsified in the future or not will not affect people's morality. Further, while science is based on evidence, religion is based on faith, repudiating the principle that it is for the party asserting that something is the case to provide the evidence. If it were vice versa, Christians would also have to accept an infinite number of other gods. The fact that whatever scientific assertion may one day be disproven does nothing to make any religious assertion more credible.

No-one, as far as I know, has ever killed in the name of atheism, as atheism does not entail any particular ethical system. Religion can make otherwise good people do bad things; atheism does not. A person who does not kill, merely because 'God' 'commands' him not to, is not a good person: thus religion does not turn otherwise bad people into good people. I am not convinced that the Catholic Church's stance on abortion derives from a desire to preserve life. Indeed, early Christians, like St Paul, believed that abortion, and even assault causing miscarriage, were morally acceptable until the point of ensoulment. If the Church believed in preserving life at all costs, it would ban war. Alternatively, if the motive were a concern that the unbaptized unborn might not go to Heaven, why did the Church recently 'abolish' Purgatory? The most likely motive is a dislike of sex. 'Artificial' contraception is banned even within a marriage, and, even after Vatican II, only sex that is intended to be procreative has been permitted. And then of course there is the clerical celibacy, which is probably one cause of this systemic child-abuse problem.

“I am not saying that reasoning badly is necessarily morally bad, if that is what you mean.”
I’m not saying that either, because that is not what I mean. When I talk about sane people having faith in Reason, I am not talking about morals but about mental health.
Let me try once more. If we wish to remain sane, we must trust our reasoning faculties, such as they may be, and that trust has to be like the trust of a child, because our very belief in the reliability of Reason itself depends on having that trust in the first place. Before you can say “I think; therefore I am”, you have to trust that the adverb “therefore” means something and means that the conclusion be an available consequence of whatever premisses you have posited.
Reason is to our intellects, I suggest, what the sun is to our powers of vision. Neither source of illumination permits itself to be scrutinised with impunity. Attempting to ‘prove’ the one will blind us and attempting to ‘prove’ the other will drive us mad. The sun and Reason are both systems of proof which cannot themselves be ‘proved’. How could we possibly test how sunlight enables us to see things, when sunlight is the thing by which we see everything, and how can we possibly test how Reason enables us to draw conclusions from given premisses, when it is by Reason itself that we test the drawing of conclusions from given premisses.
Our healthy trust both in sunlight and in Reason has to be the sort of trust which wisely refuses to look a gift horse in the mouth, for both of those illuminators are gifts. In no way could we work them out for ourselves. You may argue about who the giver may be but, whoever it is, the gifts seem to come with a “use it or lose it” condition attached.

“..... to some extent trust/faith is necessary” you continue “but.... some assertions are worthier of trust than others, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

Once again, sir, you neglect to tell on what criterion assertions “worthier of trust” are to be distinguished from less worthy ones. Why should the reader believe your unsupported assertion? If “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, we might usefully start with the plausible but utterly unprovable claim that the ‘laws’ of the sciences apply always and everywhere – the ‘semper et ubique’ theory. Why should anyone with any experience of the world be expected to believe, despite all the contrary evidence, that there be laws which can never be broken?

The Catholic Church you describe as “ child-abusing, money-grabbing, Fascism-supporting” but at least that institution does not, I understand, have a policy of permitting the extermination of unborn infants, as our own secular law system has – reported to be permitting exterminations on a scale likely to have by now put certain earlier ‘holocausts’ in the shade.

Peter Preston, I am not saying that reasoning badly is necessarily morally bad, if that is what you mean. E.g. a man with no responsibilities who decides to waste his entire day praying, simply because a holy book tells him to do so and presents him with carrots and sticks, is reasoning badly, but he is most likely not hurting anyone else. Unfortunately, such intrinsically harmless actions are not the only ones that holy books command, and in any case most people do not live in total isolation.

As I have conceded, to some extent trust/faith is necessary, but, as I have also stated, some assertions are worthier of trust than others, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Further, even a moderately intelligent and educated individual is somewhat qualified to assess scientific assertions critically, logic being a basic, universal language as it were.

Also, some semantic ambiguity clouds your use of the word 'faith'. Trust/Faith in God is unconditional belief in God's existence and love for 'him'. Trust/Faith in certain scientists is merely the acceptance that those scientists have some expertise that makes their assertions more credible than they otherwise would be: that trust/faith is not unconditional and does not entail love. In reference to a recent example, no-one is denigrating Einstein by suggesting that actually particles may travel faster than the speed of light.

If it were merely an issue of existential questions and assertions, I too might say, "What of it?" Unfortunately, all religions demand actions, not merely thoughts, some of those actions affecting people who would rather not be so affected. Even in England, we have such problems as Islamic terrorism, attempts to foist Sharia on Muslim-majority neighbourhoods, bishops in the House of Lords, charitable status for religious organizations. The list goes on. Unfortunately, in many areas of the world, religion is even more tyrannical. Thus, for the child-abusing, money-grabbing, Fascism-supporting Catholic Church, or the genocidal, apocalyptic Islamists in the Middle East, to pose as exemplars of morality just makes me sick. It is as ridiculous as if the Nazis had merely promised to reform in 1945 and had since been conducting regular rallies and parades.

Like any other rational person, I have conclusively accepted only one proposition, the only one that is self-evident: "I think; therefore I am."

In reply to Jerry Owen.
Personally I think the reverse of your first thoughts on the matter As those with good intentions are weeded out by the tick box system.
As for cowards, well thats a catch all. After all do they not say, a hero is one too scared to run away . I have lived through combat, and a job fraught with danger early on in my life. And supprises happen where least expected .
As for the combat clothed teams that smash their way into houses. Were we not told this is used as a lesson to the miscreants . Making them feel the fear, law abiding citizens feel.
I remember recently a Copper was stabbed to death, in the room of a deranged illegal immigrant. As was another in the eastend of London some years before.
So no not cowards per se. but not suitable recruits either . So many fast tracked from uni .Soon a Policing degree will be a must .And like a nusing degree. Not fit for purpose.
I remember Mr Hitch saying something similar to what you say . Police piling in a house to look tough ,when they are not . or words similar . I hold no candle for them nowadays . But its at best a nasty job. And to catch a crook, who is then handled with kid gloves by the judicary. Sees the best of a bad bunch , leave.

David V. (06 October 2011 at 11:42 AM), but didnt we also have a Communist neighbourhood threat to our east? Or is that the point you are making - that without the bogey man of the polit-beureau, which seemed to appear on our TV screens every few weeks or so (when not carrying pictures of the May Day Parades, that is), the populaces and practices of the West have gone to mush?

mikebarnes
I suspect many join the police 'service' with good intentions but probably bit by bit have those noble intentions knocked out of them by said diversity courses etc. I can't really imagine joining the 'force' and not wanting to use force to stop crime when needed.
Or perhaps the police are in fact rather cowardly but would like to bully and so join because of the power and safety in numbers as was the case I witnessed!. They were certainly scared in the riots that was clear for all to see, and when I occasionally watch the trashy fly on the wall 'cop programmes' ( extremely rarely) and they are doing a drugs bust we see maybe ten of them bursting through a terraced houses front door with dogs to arrest two or three people! How do they all fit in! and just how farcical do they look!
If we really need the numbers of police in these instances just imagine the mayhem if all of these events increased by a magnitude of say ten, there wouldn't be enough police to go round. The reason I suspect that they now relying more and more on CCTV to pick up people later rather than deal with the crime when it should be dealt with.

"..... clearly faith cannot be rationally defended, but it is hardly necessary for sanity."

I seem not to have made my point clear, sir. What is it that makes sane people trust that reasoning well is good, whereas reasoning badly is bad? Is there perhaps something about the word "faith" itself that makes you automatically associate it solely with religion? It can be interchanged, if you prefer, with the more neutral word "trust" without any alteration of meaning.
If a religious man "trusts" in God, while you "trust" in practitioners of the sciences, what of it? If you kindly seek to show the other fellow the 'error' of his thinking, might he not return the courtesy by pointing out that you could scarcely in a whole lifetime of dedicated and industrious study have qualified yourself in more than a couple of the recognised sciences. So what about the findings of practitioners of the other sciences in which you are not qualified and experienced and so in no position to assess those findings critically? Do you nevertheless accept those findings, even though you cannot personally 'prove' them?
If you do, because you trust in the skill and integrity of the researchers, by what "do as I say, not as I do" kind of logic can you mock a man for doing what you yourself are doing. And if you have never even made the acquaintance of the researchers concerned, is not your faith of a kind even closer to that of the religious man.

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed"

Or do you trust only the scientific findings which you have personally proved? If so, it is a respectable enough philosophy but, when you come to think about it, isn't that what we have all done since childhood? Trial and erro, I think it's generally called.

When I've spoken of the success Singapore, Japan and South Korea have had by not succumbing to the left-liberal cancer, it makes one wonder this. Could it be because, being in Asia and adjacent to a very real Communist threat for decades, that those countries were more proactive in preventing Marxist ideas away from poisoning their societies' fabric?

@ Jerry Owen
What we have here is Political Correct PC's. Part of Politically Correct Police Services. Run by Politically Correct Commisioners. Or should it be Commisars. So hunting down politically incorrect attitudes, must be the essence of modern policing .

I haven't seen to application form . But I'm sure, writ large on page one, it states Equality and Diversity are our most important aims. Catching miscreants on or near then last page, if at all.
So from that I believe, all police now recruited, are unsuitable, because they passed the scrutineers in political correctness . At some point they might have it knocked out of them. But as a career enhancer they will need to keep any normal feelings well hidden .
As the author of this blog has said before .Catching criminals is way down the order of priorities ( As least I think he said that .Veggie a salient tale )
By the by .I thought this smacking law never made it . As long as it is that, a smack not an attack with a baseball bat. As I suffer daily from my grandson.

Evan Cusick, if someone were to tell me that he derives hope from an invisible, intangible, pink elephant that follows him everywhere, yes, I probably would say something 'insulting', if only to knock some sense into him. I hardly think that debating the fundamental existential questions is boring, but I suppose it may be for someone who has already immutably made up his mind. Only in the mind of a religious believer, could examining a person's beliefs be considered an insult to him, his friends, his family, his colleagues and the host of the 'blog on which the examiner dared to do such a thing. I did not presume to say that every believer was as a whole an irrational person. I am saying that faith is irrational, and thus deriving hope from it is irrational, and certainly using it in an argument about whether we can derive hope from the state of society is irrational.

Peter Preston, clearly faith cannot be rationally defended, but it is hardly necessary for sanity. I doubt that not believing in an eternal afterlife, especially when that may take the form of eternal damnation, would drive many people insane.

'Not a dog' is one legitimate definition of 'cat'. I am not saying that every assertion that is 'not a scientific, rational assertion' is religious faith. I am saying that every assertion of religious faith is 'not a scientific, rational assertion'. Without that base of irrationality, religious faith by definition could not exist.

I would happily accept scientific evidence of turning water into wine, an angel's descent from the sky, a virgin birth, etc: I would be pretty generous in that regard.

I agree that to some extent trust or faith is necessary, but some assertions deserve more trust or faith than others. A collection of assertions of seemingly impossible events, posed by individuals and groups with huge vested interests, and supported by no evidence, and often contradicted by other equally incredible collections of assertions, is not worth an ounce of faith or trust.

James Mac
Apologies in being flippant. Had the dog been a small child and you had slapped it the outcome would have been very different indeed!
Last week whilst leaving a clients house in Kensington I noticed two police cars one police van and five policemen milling about, also the street was blocked. A front door opposite was open and I suspected a burglary, but I was wrong. Apparently a father had been witnessed slapping his errant boy!
The police arrived quicker than you could shake a stick at a dog as it were! ( Sorry couldn't resist!)
I kid you not this really happened and yes I despair at the police, is it the top brass giving certain orders, is it the way they are trained, or do a certain type now wish to join the police, the type that refuse to see the rather large elephant taking over our society?

If that were so, sir, how would we defend our faith in the superiority of good reasoning over bad reasoning – a superiority which is plainly not accessible to rational proof but must simply be believed by anyone who wants to hang on to his sanity?

You continue, sir:
“In truth, there could be the most compelling evidence in the world against God's existence, and some people would still believe in him: by definition then, faith is not a scientific, rational assertion."

Well first of all, why should the reader believe such an absurdly hypothetic assertion? A simple “how do you know?” and your hypothesis is in tatters. Secondly, the “then” adverb which follows your hypothesis seems to suggest that you regard that wild hypothesis of yours itself as justifying a ‘definition’ of faith which, unlike other definitions, describes what “faith” is not rather than what it is.
A man who hated dogs but liked cats could hardly claim, after all, that “not a dog” was a defining characteristic of the word “cat”, except of course in his own perhaps rather obsessed imagination.

“To believe in an assertion” you continue “for which there is no evidence is irrational enough.”

But what “evidence” are you prepared to accept, sir? Scientific evidence, perhaps? If so, which scientific findings would you accept and which would you reject? If you would accept them all, are you personally sufficiently qualified and experienced in all the fields concerned to assess those findings professionally, without running a risk of being, so to speak, intellectually ‘brow-beaten’ by individuals better qualified or more experienced than yourself? Or do you accept some – or all – such findings, because you trust the skill and integrity of researchers, even of those perhaps whom you may never have even met?
In the end you have to put your trust in someone – or even in something, like Reason herself. We are all one way or another more or less faithful believers.

Do you always go out of your way to rubbish anyone who tells you about something they derive hope and joy from. If so could I inquire as to why? I would have fought hope in a hopeless world was a positive thing, I never tried to question your beliefs.. its an online and this sort of [now frankly boring] atheist-creationist back and forth is not worth doing here.

But since you have taken it upon yourself to insult me I will not stand back without reply.
D. Potter said"As for faith, faith is the suspension of reason: you are deriving hope from something for which there is no evidence". I am actually quite well educated and study Biology. I am a perfectly logical and reasonable man and would rather you didn't insult the intelligence me, my family and most of my friends and colleagues too [and Peter Hitchens to while your at it]. Believe it or not there are quite a lot of reasonable people who also have Faith in God.

He addressed the Conservative Party Conference this afternoon, so can Quddus Akinwale and his family now expect the ridicule, derision, intrusion, and general abuse that were last week heaped on the person and family of his fellow Sixth Former, Rory Weal? If not, why not?

After all, unlike Master Weal, Master Akinwale was not even a delegate speaking from the floor, but an invited platform speaker brought along by his Headmistress and so presumably subject to school rewards or sanctions based on what he did or did not say. What sort of party gives scheduled platform time to a callow youth, speaking specifically, not as an activist and delegate, but as a schoolboy? The sort that keeps Theresa May in the Cabinet, that's what sort of party.

I am sorry, and not a little disappointed, that even Peter Hitchens fell into the anti-Weal castigation of an adolescent for daring to express a political opinion. Hitchens is normally the most trenchant critic of his own generation's self-indulgence. Yet he indulged it what was really nothing other than a Baby Boomer's oozing of entitlement.

When the political parties were still mass membership organisations integrated into mainstream culture and society, as Hitchens would rightly like new ones to be, then activity in them from the mid-teens upwards was normal. Not universal, of course. But normal. Under those circumstances, how could it not have been? The demand to keep such activity reserved to the late middle-aged is a demand to keep it in the hands of those who are currently that age. And who, of all people, might they be?

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